Fourth Street Gardens

The venue is beautiful, the owner is passionate about her job, and was initially incredible to work with. But sadly, her business ethics, communication pitfalls, and customer treatment could use some “aesthetic landscaping” itself. I am not a bridezilla, as it taken me about 13 months to write this, hoping time would allow me to be as objective in my review as possible. When working with a business, I appreciate transparency and a benefit-of-the-doubt mentality, especially when factoring in past communication and an, up-till-then, excellent working relationship. Melissa was blinded by her unwillingness to understand my point of view and the desire to make top-dollar, even after expressing my apologies for the unintentional mishap that happened when changing email addresses. Instead, I received defensive and shockingly poor treatment by the owner that attacked my character and integrity. This should never be okay, and technology is fallible. But my impression is she didn’t want to honor the contract, used her software as the only means to communicate, and didn’t want to email or call me when I didn’t respond. Because if I didn’t, she could get out of it. I hope she uses this as a learning opportunity to treat people better and know that I would have paid what she wanted; I would have paid the new full price too, but I just didn’t know what was going on until it was too late. And she would not ameliorate the situation or help me make something else work. Here’s what happened: I signed a contract with Melissa in 2021 for the then-weekday rates for June 2022. After a great venue visit and pleasant discussion with Melissa, we signed a contract, and I promptly paid my deposit. Due to some life events, I worked with Melissa to see if we could push my original date to 2023. She was honest and said she didn’t know yet but would let me know. She did, and we signed a new contract for 2023 at the same rate. I was excited to have my wedding at her venue. We touched based in Fall 2022 to make sure we were on the same page. No issues. Around this time, I changed my phone number and email address, both of which I updated on the newest contract for 2023, but her client software – HoneyBook – did not have the email address change. So, any correspondence after did not go to my new email, which I hadn’t expected nor foresaw to be an issue. But sometime after touching base, she wanted to increase my fee, which she was fair and let me still have it for less than what she was currently charging. Her fees doubled between 2021 2023, which most costs had by then, especially wedding costs. But because I did not get a notification of her message, I was not aware of it. So, in late 2022, just after printing my official invitations, I noticed a refund from her venue. Not sure what it was, I logged in to HoneyBook to see multiple messages, the last of which telling me that my failure to correspond has relinquished my date and my deposit was refunded. I immediately sent an email to Melissa, feeling direct correspondence outside her tool would be better, and I let her know what happened. Instead of the caring and understanding owner I’d been working with, I got a strongly written respond about how I was trying to not pay the price increase, and that’s why I didn’t respond. For her, the failure to respond quickly, as I always had, was proof to her that it was intentional. I asked her why she didn’t try to call me. She had my new number. This seemed to warrant at least a secondary line of communication to ensure something strange wasn’t happening, especially so close to the wedding date. She never provided an answer as to why she didn’t call me before cancelling my date. Naturally feeling upset, I told her I would expect more from a business than accusations. I explained the change in email address, so I didn’t see her messages. She went so far as to confirm with IT at HoneyBook that it wasn’t possible for the messages to be “read” without me seeing them. I read them after seeing the refund, but not before. But she would not accept my answer and continued to reiterate that I was intentionally dodging her request for more money. This is when it was much more obvious that she did not want to accept her lack of proactivity too; that it was about money. Not my integrity. She couldn’t be wrong. And HoneyBook was perfect. Even though I’d prefer sharing the entire email for transparency and full context, I will let her keep some privacy and integrity over how she treated me in her respones. But this last section of the email speaks for itself better than I would want to paraphrase: “We have put in a tremendous amount of work this past year and are not willing to give away a date in our most popular month for the [original rate] we had booked you in 2021. We reserve the right to cancel weddings, provided we refund you the full amount you have paid, which we have done.” She continued to defend HoneyBook and added one last jab -- “…but from our side of things it does look like you were deliberately ignoring messages regarding the price. I wish the best in finding another venue to celebrate your wedding.” And even though I already knew I couldn’t work with her after feeling so insulted, she was not willing to work with me to re-reserve the date (probably because she already gave it to someone else) nor did she offer a different date. I was left hanging months away from my wedding, trying to find a venue after finalizing everything, and, as Melissa was so keen to say, in the busiest wedding month of the year. For anyone wanting to book or reschedule more than a year in advance, please be advised. Although the communication mishap and price hike is not likely to be as steep as my story, there are things the owner is willing and not willing to do. And she will not care if your story conflicts with hers or her interests, and HoneyBook can’t be blamed either. And I will continue to say a little bitterly still – Apparently a phone call is too much to ask when your spending thousands of dollars at a venue. Best of luck!